International Law

Better than Working at Wal-mart

By Stan

Can’t help but be amused at this heartwarming tale I saw on Danwei a few days ago that has been making the Net rounds:

Today’s Beijing Times reported on a fraud case which Involves a 99-year-old man named Zhou Zhiping who is charged with fleecing the victim, a Mr Chen, of 749,000 yuan.

Zhou went on trial yesterday in a Beijing court. His advanced age makes him the "oldest suspect in Beijing on record."

According to the prosecutors, in his dealings with Chen, Zhou had falsely claimed himself to be "Li Liejun" (???). The real Li Liejun was a revolutionary who once followed Sun Yat-sen and was later appointed by Chiang Kai-shek as the governor of Jiangxi Province. The official record shows that Li died in 1946.

Zhou and his two conspirators made up a story that before Nationalist Party’s high-level officials fled the Mainland in 1949, they had purchased a large quantity of American government bonds and deposited them in overseas banks. According to the con men, the assets, now valued at over 130 trillion U.S. dollars, had been frozen by the US government ever since. Zhou told Chen that to get the money, he needed a "key", which consisted of a number of US dollar banknotes with consecutive serial numbers issued in 1996.

Zhou and his accomplices asked Chen for money to fund their search for the "key" banknotes. He gave them cash over a period of three years before realizing that he had been had.

I think the old dude should be congratulated for being enterprising at his age. Not one to suck on the public teat (as it were), this guy is out there hustling (literally) to make a living. Good for him. I know some law firms that would make a guy like that a partner.

Let’s not be to harsh on the guy. After all, he only swindled some American Chinese person out of some cash. The laws have changed so much over the past few years, I’m not even sure that’s really illegal anymore.

[After checking with our research department, I've been informed that yes, fraud is indeed still a crime and no, I should not admire the old guy for ripping someone off. I stand corrected.]

Full post as published by China Hearsay on February 09, 2009 (boomark / email).